Moby Dick

During the previous voyage, a mysterious white whale severed the leg of a sea captain named Ahab. Now, with constant adventures and terrible failures in pursuit, Pekvoda's crew must follow the mad Ahab to the abyss to quench his quenchable thirst for revenge. Told by cunningly observant crew member Ishmael, this is the story of the hunt for the challenging, omnipotent and, ultimately, mysterious white whale - Moby Dick. On its surface, Moby Dick is a live documentary about life in a nineteenth-century whaler, a virtual encyclopedia of whales and whaling, full of facts, legends, and trifles that Melville has gleaned from his personal experiences and a range of sources. But as the search for the whale becomes more dangerous, the tale works on allegorical levels, likening the whale to human greed, its moral consequences, its goodness, its evil, and life itself. Who is good? The big white whale, which, like nature, wants nothing more than to be alone? Or the brave Ahab, who, like scientists, researchers, and philosophers, fearlessly investigate the mysteries of the universe? Who is bad? Is it the wild sea monster that kills a man? Or is he a revenge-obsessed lunatic who ignores his own best nature in his quest to kill the monster? Despised by critics after its publication, Moby Dick was publicly ridiculed throughout the life of its author. Yet Melville's masterpiece was spared its initial misunderstanding to become an American classic with undeniably epic proportions.

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